Search results : 32

Since the beginning of 2009, the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers (CM) has adopted five country-specific Recommendations concerning the application of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages: Serbia (first monitoring cycle); Armenia, Austria and Cyprus (second monitoring cycle) and Sweden (third monitoring cycle). The Charter contains a number of provisions of relevance for the (audiovisual) media, the most detailed of which are to be found in Article 11. Of the latest batch of Recommendations on the application of the Charter, the most specific references to the audiovisual...

In a judgment of 17 June 2008 the European Court of Human Rights held unanimously that the refusal by the Armenian authorities, on several occasions, to grant the Meltex television company requests for broadcasting licences amounted to a violation of Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The Court firstly recognized that the independent broadcasting company Meltex was to be considered as a “victim” of an interference with its freedom of expression by the Armenian public authorities: by not recognising the applicant company as the winner in the calls for tenders it competed...

On 15 November 2007, Miklós Haraszti, the OSCE Representative on Freedom of the Media, presented his regular report to the OSCE Permanent Council, the organization’s main decision-making body. This was his third and final report of the year. Mr. Haraszti’s presentation began with a commemoration of Alisher Saipov, “a young journalist whose promising career was cut short by an act of brutality”. Saipov, a correspondent with the internationally acclaimed media outlets Ferghana, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America, and a founder of an Uzbek-language newspaper, was shot and killed in downtown Osh...

On 16 October 2007 at the extraordinary session of the National Assembly (the parliament) a package of draft laws was adopted that included amendments to the Armenian Electoral Code and statute "On Television and Radio Broadcasting". On the same day the bills were signed by the President of Armenia and were published on 19 November 2007 in the Official Bulletin of the Republic of Armenia and hence came into force. The amendments and additions that were introduced brought some provisions of the broadcasting law into compliance with the Electoral Code. In particular, Article 11 (“Broadcasts during...

On 16 February 2007, the Constitutional Court of Armenia heard the complaint concerning the compliance of a number of provisions of the statute of the Republic of Armenia “Rules of procedure of the National Assembly”, with the national Constitution. This refers to the provisions obliging public TV and radio to broadcast sessions and other programmes on the National Assembly (the parliament). An appeal on the matter was made on 28 December 2006 by President Robert Kocharian of Armenia. As reported by the Yerevan Press Club, the issue of covering parliamentary activities was raised in March 2006...